What Is Beauty?

Beauty is a complex idea that has inspired philosophers since antiquity. For the ancient Greeks, beauty was associated with goodness – it is the source of a person’s “kalokagathia,” or power to do good. Beauty is not only an aesthetic concept that has to do with a person’s face and body, but also includes their personality and inner qualities like kindness, wisdom, courage and compassion. A person’s kalokagathia makes them unique, but is it something that can be defined?

Historically, philosophers have debated whether there are objective standards of beauty. Some argue that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, while others say that beauty is a property of a person or object that can be objectively measured. These arguments often have different implications for the nature of art, religion, and morality.

Philosophers have tended to view beauty as a composite of many properties, not just symmetry or proportion but integrity, perfection, and order. Plato and Aristotle both argued that beauty is a property of wholes and not of parts, though they disagreed on the precise characteristics that compose beauty. Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, wrote that a thing must be beautiful in its totality, and it must be coherent: it cannot have a part that is not well integrated into the whole and that does not serve the purpose of the whole. It must have perfect proportion, and it must be clear.

The empiricists of the eighteenth century recast this notion in a more subjective way, treating beauty as a phantasm of the mind, a quality that can be experienced only by perceiving the thing’s various qualities and judging their compatibility. Some of these philosophers, such as Hume and Kant, saw that this interpretation undermined the integrity of beauty and turned it into a mere idiosyncratic experience, one that would be impossible to communicate or share.

For example, when a woman says she’s going to a party but feels overwhelmed by FOMO, don’t be afraid to say you’ll stay home instead and let her know that her decision is valid. Even small gestures like sending her a sweet text or remembering important dates can show her that you care, which can make her feel loved and valued.

The happiest women prioritize themselves by declining events and favors that seem too stressful or time-consuming to enjoy, and they do so without feeling guilty. A person’s kalokagathia is not something that can be quantified by how much they enjoy a dinner or a movie with their friends, but it is what gives them the ability to love and care for others. And that is the definition of true beauty. It is about knowing that your worth comes from someone greater than the boy who commented the fire emoji on your Instagram picture. It’s about knowing that the most beautiful thing a woman can be is to be a loving wife, mother and friend. And when you can see that beauty in her, it’s truly breathtaking.